On June 26, 2017, Bradford W. Caraway was appointed as the Chapter 13 Standing Trustee for the Northern District of Alabama, Southern Division. He replaced D. Sims Crawford who had been appointed as a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of Alabama. Trustee Caraway maintains his office in Birmingham. At the time of his appointment as Standing Trustee,...

By Veronica D. Brown-Moseley and Stephen F. Relyea1 The automatic stay serves as a shield that immediately protects debtors in bankruptcy and their property from a host of creditor collection actions ranging from foreclosure, repossession, and garnishment to collection letters and phone calls. In most instances, the filing of a bankruptcy case forces creditors to cease all collection actions and...

By Henry E. Hildebrand, III, Chapter 13 Standing Trustee (Nashville, TN) Over the past twenty years, the judicial estoppel doctrine has had a significant impact on people who file bankruptcy. Judicial estoppel has grown to be a significant issue within the consumer bankruptcy system. The Commission was asked to address it. Judicial estoppel is a doctrine created to protect the...

By John P. Gustafson, United States Bankruptcy Judge, Northern District of Ohio, Western Division (Toledo, OH) Click here for Part 1 Click here for Part 2 Click here for Part 3

By Alexander Schmidt1, Law Clerk, and The Honorable John P. Gustafson, United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio (Toledo) You have never heard – or seen – the Monster Mash. What have you heard, is a song ABOUT the Monster Mash. Let that sink in for a minute. Inevitably, that leads to the obvious question: What facts...

By John P. Gustafson, United States Bankruptcy Judge, Northern District of Ohio, Western Division A. Property Acquired After The Filing Of The Chapter 13 Case: The Different Approaches. 1. Property Acquired Post-Petition vs. Property “Vesting In The Debtor”. Click here for Part 2 The broad issue of what becomes property of the Chapter 13 estate post-petition involves consideration of two...

When Does The Bankruptcy Code Require The Payment Of Interest On Unsecured Claims In Chapter 13? I. Introduction This article primarily discusses the interpretation and application of § 1325(b)(1)(A) of the Bankruptcy Code in relation to the payment of interest to general unsecured creditors in chapter 13 bankruptcy cases. Section 1325(b)(1)(A) generally states that a court may not approve a chapter...

NCLC’s Executive Director Rich Dubois and NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson are calling on Congress and federal regulators to take action to prevent an impending foreclosure crisis in communities of color, in an opinion editorial published yesterday in The Hill. The op-ed highlights how the cumulative impact of decades of housing policy discrimination on African American homeownership, coupled with...

The CFPB (Bureau), May 2, 2019, issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which proposes to raise the coverage thresholds for collecting and reporting data about closed-end mortgage loans and open-end lines of credit under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) rules. The NPRM would provide relief to smaller lenders from HMDA’s data reporting requirements, and would clarify partial exemptions...